Irish government’s decision to scrap its €3 travel tax paves way for airline's
expansion at main Ireland base

Ryanair will add 100 extra flights from Dublin to Britain next year as a part of a job-creating deal to expand its main Ireland base following the Irish government’s decision to scrap its €3 (£2.50) travel tax.

The low-fare airline, which has been on a drive to improve its customer service, plans to launch nine new routes from Dublin from next April as well as increase frequencies on eight existing routes.

Ryanair said it would deliver an extra 700,000 passengers a year, creating 700 new on-site jobs at the airport. That is based on an industry formula that suggests up to 1,000 new jobs can be created from every 1m additional passengers.

The carrier will also create more than 300 direct jobs in Ireland, it said, for pilots, cabin crew, customer service staff and software specialists as it “rolls out an extensive programme of customer service and website improvements”.

Michael O’Leary, chief executive, said the route expansion was the final part of the airline’s promised delivery of an extra 1m passengers at Ireland’s airports following the scrapping of the tax from next April. Knock and Shannon airports are also set to benefit.

Mr O’Leary said the expansion was a “direct response to the government’s welcome initiative” to get rid of the tax, adding: “A critical component of this growth will be 100 extra weekly flights into Dublin from Britain, which will reverse the recent tourism declines in UK visitors coming to Ireland.”

Stansted, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester will see extra weekly flights, while new routes from Dublin include Bucharest, Lisbon and Marrakech.